On Your Reinforcements

Look at the people you spend the most time with. Do these people reinforce a healthy, positive psychology. Or do they reinforce a negative, cynical, results-destroying psychology?

When you were young, your parents were concerned about who you hung around with. They wanted you to have the right friends (And if you were my mother, I gave you a lot to worry about in this regard). There’s a good reason your parents worried about who you spent time with: it reinforced a certain psychology, a certain set of beliefs, and a certain set of behaviors.

What concerned your parents should still concern you. The people you spend time with can build you up or pull you down.

Positive Reinforcements

Are the people you spend time with making you more positive? Do they reinforce your belief that you are capable of more, that you can be more? Did they reinforce a positive personal psychology, empowering you and supporting you?

Do they challenge you to be more? Do they inspire you? What are you providing them? Are you growing together, learning from each other?

Negative Reinforcements

Or do the people you spend time with reinforce your fears? Do they have a scarcity mindset, always believing that they don’t have enough because someone else has more? Are they naysayers and cynics, never drinking the Kool-Aid? Do they blame others for where they are?

Do they lower the bar? Have you allowed them to steal your dreams? I don’t know if misery loves company, but the miserable sure do. What beliefs are they reinforcing?

Your Choice

You are responsible for you own personal psychology, your mindset. You have to protect that personal psychology. You may not recognize the negative influences continually working at the subconscious level destroying your personal psychology, but I assure they are all around you.

The antidote is to not allow people with a negative personal psychology to make their psychology your psychology. That means avoiding negative people and refusing to be infected by their poor mindset.

Inoculate yourself by spending time with people who have higher standards and who will hold you accountable to your own highest standards.